The man I bought my amp from imagined he was boasting, but I was appalled, the list went on and on; he had spent - by my rough estimate - upwards of three hundred thousand dollars over the previous twenty years on dozens of things, and yet he was still groping and didn’t sound satisfied.
I took it as a warning.
I have older equipment that sounds wonderful and is mostly 8+ out of 10 condition.
That means the previous owners exerted a special effort to keep those things fine, day after day for decades never letting the cat jump on it, etc.
I feel a responsibility to them whom I will never know and am thankful to for doing so, and someday God willing, others will enjoy this equipment and feel the same way.
And a system is a kind of musical instrument, deeply personal to the owner-user, an extension of their self, worth more than its price.
Every penny spent is written down, but for me, the total cost reveals mistakes vs successes, the total cost of the system vs the total cost of learning to build a system, as evidence of the effectiveness of my research and the soundness of my reasoning in making choices.
The ratio means a lot to me, and the system is worth far more to me than what I spent on it.
